Monday, 7 September 2015

What makes these images very interesting is that Vertue gives the source of the original portraits used to create the engravings. The first real attempt to collect together true images of the Kings and Queens of England.

For a very full study (230 pages) on the Bazililogia see - Baziliologia A Booke of Kings: Notes on a Rare Series of Engraved English Royal Portraits from William the Conquerer to James I, by H.C.Levis, published by The Grolier Club, New York in 1913.

Renold Elstrack was the foremost English engraver of his time. His first dated plates were made in 1598 and he produced mainly maps and portraits. Elstrack's portraits of the royal family bear no relation to any known painting and it is believed that he composed them himself; their beauty and rarity made them highly sought after. Elstrack probably never published himself, but worked for a number of London publishers, initially for the partnership of John Sudbury and George Humble, and from 1616 for the newly established firm of Compton Holland.

This was the first series of engravings of the Kings and Queens of England and came at a time when collections of Paintings of the Kings and Queens of England had become fashionable in Aristocratic Circles.

For an excellent and very full thesis on the subject of sets of painted portraits of royalty for her DPhil for the University of Sussex 2015 by Catherine Daunt see -

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"The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poets says, calls a fig a fig and a spade a spade. He should yield to neither hatred nor affection, not should be unsparing and unpitying. He should be neither shy nor deprecating, but an impartial judge, giving each side all it deserves but no more. He should know in his writing no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king. He should never consider what this or that man will think, but should state the facts as they really occurred. Lucian of Samosata